Syrian fighter jets 'fired on civilians fleeing rebel town'

Refugees fleeing to Lebanon across border from town of Yabroud, a major
rebel-held staging post, say government forces have opened fire despite
appeals by the UN to allow safe passage

A Syrian family, who were originally displaced from the town of Qusayr to Yabroud, unload their belongings at a recently-constructed refugee camp that is currently housing some of the roughly 600 families that have fled from the town of Yabroud and its surrounding villages to Arsal in LebanonPhoto: Sam Tarling

Syrian fighter jets fired on civilians fleeing a regime offensive on rebel positions close to the Lebanese border, eye-witnesses told The Telegraph on Friday, despite appeals by the UN to allow refugees safe passage.

Streams of refugees fled across the border from the town of Yabroud, a major rebel-held staging post north-west of the capital Damascus which has been under bombardment for days.

The United Nations warned that a ground attack was “imminent” and said the Syrian government had a duty to protect non-combatants as well as captured fighters.

“We are deeply concerned that the attack on Yabroud may follow the pattern of previous attacks,” Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, said. “Government aerial bombardments were indiscriminate and disproportionate in violation of obligations under international law and ensuing land incursions resulted in heavy civilian casualties.”

But as thousands of civilians fled across the border to the town of Aarsal on the Lebanese side, they said they had come under attack from MiG fighter jets and helicopters.

“I came here on my motorbike with my wife and our two infant children on the back,” said Abu Mohammed, 43. “The Syrian jet fired more than a dozen rockets on our road. We just escaped with our lives.”

Abu Mohammed was speaking from a dusty refugee camp just inside Lebanon. Other refugees corroborated his account. One elderly man who gave his name as Abu Ibrahim said shrapnel from a bomb had come “within 20 metres”.

An Aarsal resident, Abu Hussain, who helped ferry survivors from another attack across the border to hospital, said: “Three days ago jets bombed two pick up trucks that were full of refugees in the back.

They narrowly missed but four people were killed and many others were wounded.

“If a car is travelling from Syria to Lebanon it is obvious that it is not taking guns to the rebels. It is full of civilians. It has happened several times. There are several routes to Aarsal and this week, every day the regime has bombed one of them.”

Preparations for the government assault began after attempts at a truce failed, residents said. The government has been adopting what opposition activists call a “surrender or starve” policy - as in Homs, offering to lift sieges in exchange for the rebels giving up their weapons.

Government officials tried the same policy in Qalamoun, the mountainous district between Damascus and the border that includes Yabroud, but when Jabhat al-Nusra, a group aligned with al-Qaeda, turned the offer down, the government launched its offensive.

“After the talks collapsed we knew we had 24 hours to leave,” said Abu Mohammed. “After that the shelling started.”

A doctor speaking from Yabroud said people were now reluctant to leave because of the bombing of the roads and mountain paths leading to the border.

Mr Colville said there were 40-50,000 civilians still in Yabroud, whose occupants are mainly Sunni Muslim and Christian.

Opposition-linked monitors say the intensity of fighting inside Syria has increased since the beginning of peace talks in Geneva. About 400 people have been killed by air strikes and “barrel bombs” dropped on Aleppo alone in the last two weeks, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, with pitiful pictures emerging of children and other civilians being pulled from the wreckage of their houses.

Altogether, it said 4,959 people had been killed since the talks began three weeks ago, the highest death rate since the uprising started.

The intensity of the fighting has renewed pressure on the international community, particularly on the Russians, who back the regime, and the Americans and British, who back the opposition. The second round of talks finished last night without even agreement on an agenda for further discussions.

The Russians insisted that talks could not focus only on “transition”, which they say means regime change. Western diplomats say the regime refuses to discuss anything except co-operation in the war against “terrorists” - its term for opposition fighters.

“Failure is always staring at us in the face,” Lakhdar al-Brahimi, the UN envoy conducting the negotiations, said. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, meanwhile said he had been asked by President Barack Obama to explore other avenues to dealing with the Syrian crisis.

“He has asked all of us to think about various options that may or may not exist,” Mr Kerry said. “The answer to the question: have they been presented? No, they have not. But that evaluation, by necessity, given the circumstances, is taking place.”

Turkish officials said Mr Kerrry was considering reviving a plan to hold separate talks with Iran and Saudi Arabia, the regional powers who are strongly backing the regime and the rebels respectively.

“Iran has to be at the table,” one said. “We have had the idea of a contact group of all parties involved but Saudia Arabia won’t be at the same table as Iran. Therefore we’ve proposed two contact groups, one with Iran and one with Saudi Arabia.”

Western officials said the Geneva talks were not expected to make significant progress even if there were another round.

“The talks are not particularly getting anywhere since the regime is not engaging on the issue of transition but we are clear that a political solution is necessary,” a diplomat said. “Since events on the ground are moving with great urgency there is more to be done. Its about getting others to send messages to press the regime to change.”